HDR help

[Chancepics]

Whenever I try to do a single RAW HDR I get so much noise yet I see others with beautiful single RAW HDR's. Does anybody knows why this is. I am using Photomatix.

[doubleconvex]

I specifically process HDRs from a single exposure.

A couple of things...
a. take multiple shots of the same subject. Use the Auto-Exposure Bracketing feature of your camera to do this. This will give you a range of exposures to choose from while creating your HDR;
b. choose your tone-mapping carefully. The higher your strength of tone mapping, the more noise you will get in dark areas. Higher saturation levels will also increase noise. Also, try to maximise light smoothing;
c. When all else fails, use a noise removing program such as Noiseware. HDR is not designed to be used in the dark and works best for photos taken at dawn or at dusk.

I have a few tips on my HDR tutorial at the following link:
Broadening your range: How to create High Dynamic Range (HDR) images from a single exposure

Hope this helps.

[Chancepics]

When doing a single raw does a under, over, or "perfectly" exposed image work better??

[kirbinster]

I'm no expert but I just did one this weekend from one raw shot. What I did was replicate it twice in Lightroom then boosted the exposure by +2.0ev in one and by -2.0ev in another. I then exported them to PhotoMatix and created this shot:



The original is as an attachment below

[doubleconvex]

Originally Posted by Chancepics

When doing a single raw does a under, over, or "perfectly" exposed image work better??

I have resurrected images that have been grossly underexposed, or overexposed and made very decent images out of them. Case and point, this image:

To begin with, it was grossly out of balance. The water had been over-exposed. The midtones were underdone.

I managed to resurrect it in a fairly pain staking effort. I used 13 f-stops spaced out a 1/3rd of an EV, starting from -4.00 to finally get the image below.



However, as a general rule, you'll be able to resurrect your images better if you underexpose by 1/3rd of an f-stop, rather than over expose it.

I will also throw in one more observation... composition is key. No amount of HDR or Post Processing will make a poor shot look good. They are merely tools.

[doubleconvex]

Originally Posted by kirbinster

I'm no expert but I just did one this weekend from one raw shot. What I did was replicate it twice in Lightroom then boosted the exposure by +2.0ev in one and by -2.0ev in another. I then exported them to PhotoMatix and created this shot:



The original is as an attachment below

I've taken the liberty of treating this image to two different treatments for these two effects. See what you think... but the possibilities are endless